Dominic Sergi made a late entry onto the list of the Chicago’s area’s biggest industrial real estate deals of 2022 with his company’s takeover of a portfolio of nearly three dozen properties from Gary and Michael Rothbart.
A purchase by Sergi’s Clear Height Properties, a company based in suburban Oak Brook for which he serves as CEO, totals more than $100 million as seller Rothbart Construction Realty cashed out on a chunk of its local holdings amid near-record demand for industrial assets.
The deal, a portion of which was initially reported by The Real Deal last week based on $34 million-worth of deeds posted in Lake and Kane counties, is actually concentrated on properties in the western suburban jurisdiction of DuPage County.
After the deeds were made public, Clear Height announced in a news release that the deal included a joint partnership with Harbert US Real Estate, and involved 31 industrial properties in the Chicago area and two land sites.
The deal totals more than $100 million and 1.4 million square feet, and was billed by the buyer as one of the priciest off-market industrial deals of the year. It falls behind the summer’s $150 million portfolio purchase by Blackstone’s Link Logistics in the far north suburbs of Waukegan and Zion, and just ahead of another warehouse portfolio sale by a separate Blackstone affiliate, Revantage, for $99 million to a Singapore-based buyer.
“This is a massive and significant transaction by any measure, especially considering it was completed during a period of economic uncertainty in the capital markets,” Sergi said in a statement, adding that his company has had interest in buying the assets for more than a decade.
Clear Height declined to provide a full list of properties it acquired, though public records show about 20 of the assets are concentrated in the western suburban area of Addison. Lake County properties in the deal included four along Northpoint Boulevard in Waukegan, while properties within Kane County were split between three in Elgin and one in Algonquin.
The portfolio is 98 percent leased to more than 130 businesses and is mostly in DuPage County. The joint venture owns other assets together, and the addition of the Rothbart properties gives the companies 50 assets containing about 3 million square feet.
Industrial markets have stayed tight this year as demand hovers near record levels, with only a 2.8 percent vacancy rate among Chicago area industrial properties, JLL’s third quarter report said.
CBRE’s Steve Roth and Scott Lewis facilitated the financing for the trade.
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